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“Gwawnowwdat,” said Turnbull, “and take a good look
at the pain in a horse’s eyes.

If you’d a pair of dragging hooves on you, it’s short work
they’d make of the smile on your face.”


You could see that he understood, and his fellow-feeling
for the pain in the horse’s eyes;

and that dwelling on it so long he’d finally stolen
into the innermost space


of   the horse’s pain that I saw, too, trying to plumb
the depths of  pain that it felt;

until it was Turnbull’s eyes I saw starting out from
that suffering horse’s pelt.


I looked at Turnbull and saw set under his brow
as I looked him up and down twice

the two, too-big eyes that were speechless with sorrow:
the horse’s eyes.


Translated from the Irish

Source: Poetry (November 2014)